Capital Q Ventures has placed a bet on Certus Core, joining Tampa Bay Ventures in backing the defense-focused AI startup, the company disclosed this spring. Neither the amount nor the valuation were disclosed. What's clearer is the problem Certus Core is after: getting artificial intelligence to work where the internet doesn't.
The Tampa-based company—founded by three veterans with resumes spanning the Air Force, Defense Department, and intelligence community—has built IBIS, an agentic AI platform designed for customers like U.S. Special Operations Command and the Air Force. Think: environments where connectivity is intermittent, data streams in from a dozen incompatible systems, and commanders need answers now, not after a satellite uplink finishes buffering.
For Capital Q, it's an entry point into Florida's growing defense tech cluster. For Tampa Bay Ventures, which first invested in Certus Core in early 2025, it represented the firm's inaugural government-focused bet. The follow-on suggests the company's traction—both technical and commercial—has held up.
The Edge Case
Certus Core's pitch rests on a tension familiar to anyone who's worked in defense or intelligence: you have too much data and not enough time. Sensor feeds from electronic warfare systems, signals intelligence, operational databases—most of it siloed, much of it unstructured. IBIS, the company's platform, uses agentic AI to fuse that mess into something actionable.
The architecture is purpose-built for what the company calls "the edge"—forward operating bases, autonomous airborne platforms, ships at sea. Places where you can't rely on a data center back home to crunch the numbers. Natural language queries run over knowledge graphs. A module called RFX exploits electronic warfare data in real time, mapping geolocations and generating signal heatmaps. There's an AI governance layer meant to cut down on hallucinations by querying verified sources rather than inventing answers wholesale.
It's the kind of feature set that makes sense when your co-founders are Jake Dyal (CEO), Timothy Toohill (CTO), and Joe Blankenship (CDO)—all with operational backgrounds that make the "too much data, not enough time" problem more than theoretical.
Contract by Contract
Since its first Small Business Innovation Research award in mid-2022, Certus Core has assembled the bureaucratic scaffolding that defense startups need to pursue larger contracts. There's a GSA Multiple Award Schedule contract from 2024, good through 2029. Through Carahsoft, a distribution partner, IBIS is available on eight contract vehicles—NASA SEWP V, ITES-SW2, NASPO ValuePoint among them.
The Air Force handed over a $1.25 million AFWERX SBIR Phase II contract in 2024 for semantic knowledge graph software. Special Operations Command kicked in STTR awards totaling around $1.35 million across two phases. Last summer, Certus Core teamed with Tampa-based SkyTL on a $900,000 NASA award to apply the AI to wildfire prediction—a civilian use case, but one that shares the edge computing problem.
All told, SBIR.gov lists $4.46 million in total SBIR/STTR funding since 2022. Not a fortune, but enough to prove the technology and build credibility with procurement officers.
Lean and Local
Certus Core raised $1.625 million in seed funding in early 2024, money it used to develop what was then called its Semantic Knowledge Graph platform. The product has since morphed into IBIS—Information Bridging and Integration System—a rebrand that reflects expanded ambitions. Autonomous systems integration, multi-intelligence operational pictures, maritime security. The company operates with a small team, according to its SBIR profile, and works out of Tampa's downtown core. It's registered as a service-disabled veteran-owned small business, CAGE code 96JQ7.
Scaling Without Breaking
With Capital Q and Tampa Bay Ventures now backing them, the question is how far Certus Core can stretch its agentic AI model. The use cases multiply fast: illegal fishing interdiction, contested airspace, critical infrastructure protection. The technical challenge—getting AI to perform reliably in disconnected, decentralized environments—cuts across all of them.
Defense tech investors have warmed to the thesis. Legacy command-and-control systems, designed when bandwidth was plentiful and decisions could flow up the chain, don't age well in an era of distributed operations and peer adversaries. Whether a Navy vessel tracking dark ships or an autonomous drone making targeting decisions, the argument goes that speed matters more than perfection. A good-enough answer delivered locally beats a pristine one that arrives too late from headquarters.
Certus Core is betting that edge, not cloud, is where the next generation of military AI takes hold. With fresh capital and a growing contract footprint, they've got runway to find out if the Pentagon agrees.
